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Monthly Archives: May 2008

I’ve seen the story about the guy supposed to have filed alien “peeping toms”. Please! The gue is either deluded or a conman. That still looked ridiculous’

I firmly believe in intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I just don’t believe we’ve ever been visited. The laws of physics doesn’t allow it.

Why is it in all these stories, the aliens have two arms, two legs, two eyes. In other words, a humanoid shape. That’s because the ones that tell these tales can’t imagine life as looking like anything other us. This is not Star Trek, folks. Those kinds of stories are fun to read or watch. But they’re just STORIES. They’re not real.

We’ve always had similar stories throughout human history. Check. It used to be “Demons” that kidnapped people and did unspeakable things to them. Somehow they always survived to return and spread the stories. Deluded or cons, as I said.

Something my sister told me set me to thinking about how fast the world’s changing.

Her oldest grandson, all of fourteen, is full blown into girls. He attended a dance recently with his girl friend recently and they broke up shortly thereafter. The reason: she’d never had a boyfriend that wanted to talk on the phone so much. She’d rather just text back and forth.

Say what!

There”s so much around these days that wasn’t available when I was a kid: computers, cell phones, cable TV or dish, video game systems, multi-screen theaters . The list goes on and on.

When I was a child, we had four channels on TV. Computers were in their infant stage. Hell, I remember when Pong was a big deal. The phone was a party line. For those youthful, that means several different families shared the same line. If, as I did, you had gabby neighbors, they’d keep the phone tied up for hours.

Ive thoroughly embraced most new technologies(well, I;m still a neophyte on computers, but I’m learning). I have nothing against video game systems(some look interesting). But I don’t care enough to own one(I think Atari is the last one I used: the very earliest models).

I am a reader. Always have been, always will be.

But back to my original thought. Cell phones I’ve never liked. I see people riding down the road all the time gabbing away. I was even behind one couple(they looked like a married couple I’m guessing) where both parties in the vehicle were talking on cells at the same time. That’s very dangerous of course. I often wonder what people like that did before cell phones were developed. They seem incapable of being out of touch for even a few minutes. I just don’t get it.

I like that solitariness of not being able to be found if you don’t want to be. Sometimes I don’t answer my landline if I’m not in a mood to talk. I own a disposable cell that I carry when I’m on the road to have in case of emergencies. But it’s turned off unless I need it.

Back when cell came in to widespread use, the worry was that people would lose the art of face-to-face conversation. Now, are young folks evolving into text-messaging instead of talking? It seems ridiculous on the face of it. But most young people are growing up these days with all this technology as a matter of fact. They’ve never known anything different.

Home Health had already been discharged and, on the last visit with Doctor Vogler, he pronounced the surgery on the foot healed. He put me back in a diabetic shoe and said to start exercising my legs to build strength back up.

It’s been a long haul. For a year now, I only left the house for doctor visits and occasional outings with friends and family. Never on my own. Actually, it’s been a few years. Five surgeries since March, 2006.

I’m ready for some limited action on my own. The car, standing unused for about a year now, needed a little work. That’s done, the tank is full, and I can do for myself a bit now. I can’t go crazy yet, because the legs don’t have the strength yet. But the sense that I can do some things by myself after so long helps.

Its been very noisy around here for the last few days. A new roof is being put on the house. That involves a lot of hammering, ripping up old shingles, the noise of them sliding off to thump onto the ground. It won’t last much longer. I hope.

Shoot Him IF He Runs is the latest adventure of Stone Barrington, Stuart Woods’ lawyer, ex-cop, character. I enyoy reading Woods’ books, but they’ve descended into growing ordinariness. They’re fun to read, but are the literary equivalent of a MacDonald’s hamburger. A cheaper version of a restaurant quality sandwich. The problem, carrying the analogy farther, is that you’re paying the restaurant price for the burger.

This time Stone and Holly Barker, the heroine of Woods’ Orchid series, are on the trail of Teddy Fay, a rogue former CIA man that has appeared before, but always manages to avoid death and slip away, though you’re not always aware of that in any one of the books he’s appeared.

Not much happens on the island of St. Marks except drinking, swimming nude, getting involved with characters from a previous book, sunbathing nude, assassinations, and such. It’s a quick read but don’t expect a lot out of it.

I just finished Anthony Neil Smith’s new novel, Yellow Medicine. The main character is a lawman that bends the rules occasionally, quite severely, without breaking them. Sort of an antihero, he gets mixed up with terrorists, an overly ambitious Fed, and drug dealers. An old partner resurfaces. Billy was a lawman in New Orleans during Katrina. Already having family problems, his wife returns with the kids to Minnesota and files for divorce.

Billy moves to the same area to be near the children. His brother-in -law, the sheriff, hires him as a deputy and he soon falls back into his slightly bent ways. Terrorism is a whole different matter though. A suitably twisted novel, the ending is open to the reader’s interpretation. Recommended to anyone who likes a good crime novel. It will hook you in.

Smith draws from his own background for the settings. A native of Louisiana, he now lives and teaches in Minnesota.

A good friend called last night to let me know what was happening with his wife. She’s a diabetic, as I am. She had the two outside toes amputated from one foot. One toe was already gone. All that’s left is the big toe and the middle one. They probably will take those two as well as the foot structure is unstable. Possibly the whole foot. When admitted to the hospital, her sugar was so high it didn’t even register on the meter. They allowed her to lay there for eighteen hours before a doctor saw her. She wanted her podiatrist called and they refused three times. Her husband assumed he’d been called. When a doctor saw her, he immediately called for a surgeon. It may have been to little to late. Possibly the toes might have been saved had the hospital acted sooner. They don’t know. I know how she feels. Infection took my left foot two years ago. Diabetes is not something to fool around with. Take care of yourself before it’s to late.

I changed the title of the blog, not because I ever thought anyone would confuse us, but to establish who I am. I was using the nickname before The Big Hurt was even born. There was also an NFL quarterback with the same name. He’s older than me, so he may predate my use of the name. There was also a Braves Infielder during the early eighties, I believe, who also had the same name. It was also used as a villain name on Fred Dryer’s series, Hunter, as well as a couple of other shows. I knew Johnson was the second most common name in ther USA. I guess Randy, or the combination of, is fairly common as well.